BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Your Space Or Mine project seeks to investigate and expand our engagement with urban spaces by working with people who use the city as their canvas and do so in ways that challenge or shift our perception of the environment. Wilson’s miniature art interventions invite closer scrutiny of our surroundings. The paintings plus the relational aspect of their making – the constant conversations with people about the work and a hundred and one other things – encourage a deeper participation, not just with our material locales but also the huge variety of people we share them with.

Wilson’s Your Space Or Mine collaboration took him on a four day tour across London making works that referenced his own past as well as the life experiences and concerns of those close to him. Day one saw Wilson return to his childhood stomping ground in East Barnet. He set up shop next to the local war memorial which stands amidst a splendid crescent of African marigolds. Wilson painted a lush little homage to these plants and, typically, also took the time to deadhead any of the pompom blooms that needed dealing with. Quite by chance a volunteer from the British Legion whose job it was to tend the plot happened by later in the day so that led to another fruitful chat. The second painting Wilson made on this site was a more personal homage to his great uncle Frank who died in the Battle of the Somme. With a glowing border of sky blue, red, green and gold, it’s an exquisite and moving sepia portrait of a young man whose life was tragically cut short by war. The painting conjures another era and reminds us that, in William Faulkner’s words, the past is never dead it’s not even past.

Day two involved a visit to the Kingsmead Estate in Hackney. This is where Wilson’s friend Charmaine grew up in the 1970s and 80s. His tiny circular tribute to her and the area is a captivating rendition of the actual flat Charmaine grew up in. She reminisced, “Seeing Mum on our balcony from as far away as Daubeney Park was an unspoken message to ‘get your backside home’. […] We played Tin Tan Tommy after evening supper where the only resource was an old tin can. Scarpering around the back of flats, in and out of each block was heaps of fun but all that hide ‘n seek enjoyment was curtailed when the council installed lifts and blocked up entrances.” The Kingsmead painting celebrates a childhood spent playing outdoors and a time of simple joys and pleasures.

Throughout lockdown Wilson had been creating a trail of miniature artworks – animals, plants, insects and train themed imagery – for The Parkland Walk Nature Reserve that follows the former Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace railway line. Day three of Wilson’s Your Space Or Mine collaboration saw him set to work on nearby Muswell Hill Broadway. While Wilson was busy with a painterly depiction of figures he’d spotted at a nearby bus stop someone called Liran, and her new born, and her mother, stopped by. Liran and her partner Kosta had asked Wilson to make a painting for them along the old railway line. They’d already given him a few notes on what their painting might feature: rainbow colours, the baby, a train (Larin has a train tattooed on her upper arm) but she wondered if Wilson might also include their dog Bublik? “Of course,” was his ever-genial response, “Maybe send me a side view photo, that’ll look good.”

Wilson’s art, the individual gems and visual treasure trails are part public service then. But while they are intimate, celebratory markers of life stories, the artist Lito Apostolaku reminds us there is always a socio-political dimension to Wilson’s endeavours. She writes that, “The discarded and transformed material evolves from and changes the environment it is in. It also subverts the environment’s sanctioned uses by inserting itself between the cracks, on the thin line that separates public from private, precious from worthless, included from excluded.”

So, it’s places, environmental concerns, the need to be creative and the interpersonal exchanges, all these inform the work. And obviously the random shapes of the repurposed gum Wilson paints on afford inspiration. That miniscule figure apparently hanging from one of the ridges on the floor of the Millennium Bridge just wouldn’t have appeared without the tiny abstract blob that informed its evolution. So many spontaneous, magical transformations hiding in plain sight are reminders to keep our eyes and minds open to the unexpected. His works demand we stay alert to that which is often overlooked. Discovering the miniature wonders re-tunes our attention and senses to the many possible enchanting encounters that every day can have in store. Perhaps that’s his most enduring gift, time and again Ben Wilson aka Chewing Gum Man unlocks our creative engagement with space and place as well as the untold people we share it with.

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